A Reason for Living
by erulawliet
Summary: Matt finds his reason for living in rather curious ways
1. Mountain

_I want to stand with you on a mountain_

"Matt, did you know the first man to reach the top of Mount Everest was English?" Matt kept his eyes glued to his Nintendo, barely listening to the tall blonde boy yammering next to him.

Summer in the Wammy's House Orphanage was a rather dull and uninteresting season; it was too hot to go out and too boring to stay inside. The only highlight was when L would take time out from his busy schedule to come down and take the kids out to the beach. Alas, Matt had been sick that day, and had to compensate for his loss with a Mario marathon coupled with a few rounds of CoD. The rest of the days had to be endured by wandering aimlessly around the orphanage and hoping that Rodger would finally come to his senses and have a pool installed in the courtyard (Though Matt knew that was never to be, the lousy miser.)

"Actually, Sir Edmund Hillary was native to New Zealand, not England. The first attempts were made by the British to conquer Everest, but it ended in horrible disaster." Near's monotonous tone drifted over to Matt, the 4 year-old boy busy trying to conquer his own mountain of poker cards.

Matt had always wondered where Near found the patience for sculpture building; surely it was more fun to blow up towers rather than to painstakingly build them up piece by piece? That was what the red-head thought anyways.

"Well that's stupid!" Mello's shrill voice rang out, causing Matt to accidentally send Mario to his doom. "Mello! You made me run right into Bowser!" he huffed, blowing his red bangs out of his eyes.

"I bet I could climb Mount Everest," Mello went on, heedless of his friend's angry complaints. "It shouldn't be that hard, I could climb any mountain there is!"

"There aren't any mountains in Winchester, Mello. Although," Near set his cards down pensively, and Matt swore he saw a sneaky glint in the pale boy's eyes. "you could always _make _a mountain…"

"That's ridic-" Matt got cut off as he felt himself being dragged away. "Mello, let me go! I don't want to make a mountain!" He cried, twisting around like a worm on a hook.

"But I do, and I need your help." Mello replied, dragging his friend mercilessly towards the scorching hot field where the kids usually played in the Spring. "Stop complaining! If you do this for me, I'll…." Mello searched for a good enough reward to make Matt comply. "I'll help steal back the Nintendo DS that Rodger confiscated from you last week."

Matt's eyes lit up. "My limited edition Final Fantasy (lll) Nintendo DS?" His eyes wandered over to the shed, where Mello was already pulling out shovels to dig with. He could swear he saw heat rising from the wooden storage shed. He thought about it.

"Thirty minutes, okay?"

_2 hours later_

Matt threw his shovel on the ground and plonked himself on the hot grassy field. "Why am I the one doing most of the work?" He called out to Mello, who sat by under an umbrella.

"Because I forgot that chocolate melts in the sun." Mello called back, cradling a chocolate bar under the umbrella to keep it from melting even faster. "I can only eat chocolate so fast, you know."

Matt rolled his eyes at the lazy ass, and looked back at their handiwork. "It's barely Near's height!" he moaned, flopping on his back. The sun seared his face, as beads of sweat clung to his forehead and dark lashes.

Near was probably instead having a good time with his cards as Matt worked like an elf for Mello. Matt closed his eyes, and tried to ignore the seductive calls of ice cream back at the orphanage. _Think of the Nintendo, your Nintendo, THE NINTENDO._

A shadow loomed over Matt, shielding his eyes from the sun's rays. Matt looked up to see Mello and his umbrella watching him from above, a bemused face on Mello. "It's not that bad, Matt. Get up."

Matt got to his feet and followed his blonde compatriot as he started to climb the little hill that they had created. Step by step, they pulled each other up until they reached the "summit". The two little boys stood in amazement at what they had managed to create.

"Technically, I did most of the work." Matt said, sitting down on their mountain. Mello followed suit, holding the umbrella between them.

"You wouldn't have been able to finish it without my significant contributions." Mello argued, breaking off another piece of already dripping chocolate and stuffing it into his mouth. "Besides," he continued, "it was my idea to make the mountain."

"So what do we call this mountain?" Matt sighed; the fatigue had finally caught up with him. "Mount Mello?"

Mello pondered upon the name, chewing listlessly on his bar of Hershey. "Mount M," he finally said, glancing at Matt.

"M? As in Mello and Matt?"

Mello nodded. "You did shovel most of the dirt," he added sheepishly. "But I'm still king of this mountain, got it?"

Matt chuckled at the sudden outburst from him. "Sure Mello," he said, resting his head on the boy's shoulder.

"Now we should probably leave before Roger discovers Mount M too."


	2. Sea

_I want to bathe with you in the sea_

"Come on Matt, the water isn't that cold."

Matt looked up at the dark eyed boy crouching next to him under a giant orange umbrella, staring out at the endless sea before them.

"I don't see you rushing into the sea though, L" Matt said, eyeing the swirling blue cautiously. He never trusted the ocean; as calm as it looked, Matt was far too aware of the dangerous tsunamis and typhoons capable of destroying huge cities. Then again, the odds of a typhoon suddenly forming to crush all of England were a tad far-fetched. But the red head didn't like to take chances.

"Sea water lowers my deductive ability by 29%." L murmured, eyes still locked on the blue ocean.

"You made that up," Matt stuck his tongue out at the older boy, but was prevented from saying anymore as a blinding force barreled into him, overturning Matt as well as the umbrella. Bright sunlight seared the boy's eyes as he looked up at his attacker.

"You know, L took the effort to take us to the seaside, _again_, mind you, since you missed out the first time. The polite thing to do would to try and have some fun, Mr Jeevas." Mello stuck his nose in the air, absentmindedly twirling a bar of Kinder Bueno between his fingers as he looked down at the flustered red head.

"What would you know about politeness, Mr Keehl?" Matt snarled, brushing off the sand from his too-long swim pants as he got up to face the bossy blonde.

"A fat lot more than you know about fun, Mr Crouch-in-the-shade."

"I hope you're not talking about me, Mello." L answered quietly, the shadow of a smile tugging at his lips as he watched the two boys face off once again.

" 'Course not, L. I'm just saying, Matt should be grateful to have been taken out of his musty cupboard under the stairs and brought to the beach, and therefore should be running around like a normal child would. Even the white sheep is having more fun that you."

The three boys looked over to see a white-haired boy surrounded by giant sand castles twice his height. Paying no attention to the small crowd of children he had managed to gather with his buildings, Near worked on building an ornate buttress on one of the towers.

"Who says I'm not having fun?" Matt countered. "Maybe I like sitting under the shade watching the rest of you live your lives?"

"Not a sadder sight if I saw one." Mello shook his head. "Check it out, I found an island a little out to sea. Bet you ten bars of Cadbury that I can swim there before you." There was a spark in Mello's eyes as he looked out to sea, Matt noticed.

"An island, Mello? Are you sure it's not just a bay or something? Besides," Matt looked at L, "Isn't this the part where you as the responsible adult in charge forbid us to swim that far into the sea?"

L merely smiled at the two boys. "Be back by 5. And Mello, be sure Matt comes back in one piece."

"Wait, what? L you can't be ser-" Matt felt himself being dragged on the sand as Mello took off for the shoreline. "Why do you always drag me around?"

" 'Cause you move too slow!" Mello jumped into the sea, sending salty spray all over the poor sand-covered boy. "Come on, the water's fine!"

Matt watched as Mello did lengths in the sea; finally deciding it was safe for him to go in. Matt walked into the water slowly, letting the water rush to his little feet and back. Slowly, he felt the water getting deeper as he waded further and further into the sea, until he was partially submerged in the water. Matt exhaled slowly, unaware he had been holding his breath as he went in, and carefully began to tread water.

"Geez, you really take your time, don't you grandpa?" Mello swam off, leaving Matt in the (metaphorical) dust. "Catch me if you can!"

Matt shook the water out of his hair and swam. And swam. And swam. However far this island of Mello's was, Matt was sure he'd swam further today than he had run in an entire year. And Matt ran quite a bit, thanks to the need to escape whenever one of Mello's antics resulted in Rodger's footsteps thudding down to whatever location was the set to another one of Blondie's hare-brained ideas. "Stop it with the random thoughts, Matt. Swim!" Matt chided himself as he continued to paddle his arms after Mello.

"Are….we….. ARE WE THERE YET?" Matt yelled over to Mello, as his arms began to ache. It wasn't long till Mello yelled back excitedly, "Yeah!"

Matt could see it, the sandy shoreline calling out to him tantalizingly. He swam with all his might, until he felt the sea bed rising up to meet his feet. He pulled himself out of the water, staggering onto the sand before flopping on his back to face the sky.

"I am not leaving this spot. You cannot make me enter that blue death trap, Mello, not for all the games in the world." Matt closed his eyes and felt the warm sunlight dance on his pale skin, slowly drying his skin and hair.

"Please, it wasn't that far, lazy ass." Matt ignored the voice as he laid there in the sun. It seemed like he had only been soaking up the sun for a couple of seconds before he heard the same annoying voice insisting they had to leave the sandy heaven, or else L was going to come after them with a meat mallet.

"Are you okay? Did the sun bake your brain, blondie?" Matt pushed himself up reluctantly and brushed sand off his pants. A rough kick in his rear landed him face down in the cold salty sea water.

"Don't call me Blondie, dumbass!"

Twenty minutes later (though it felt like 2 hours to Matt), the two boys dragged themselves out of the water back onto the beach. Matt ran with whatever strength he had left to the shady umbrella safe zone, where L crouched, unmoving since the boys had left.

"You're back. You didn't panic in the water, did you?"

"I don't enjoy swimming L, but it's not like I'm the Wicked Witch of the West." Matt shook water out of his hair, spraying the brunette with salty water. He sat down on the fuzzy mat and allowed himself to be toweled off by L. "So I guess taking you here was a total loss then, Matt?" he heard L ask.

"Well-" Matt looked over to Mello; the blonde strutting over to Near's castle to brag about how he would have made the colossal sandy monument bigger, all the while twirling another bar of Kinder Bueno between his fingers.

"Okay, maybe it wasn't a _total _loss, L."


End file.
